Occupiers' war on police

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With police clearing out many of the "Occupy" encampments, one might think that the Obama-approved protests will be over soon. However, at the national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) last weekend, there was talk of how the protests will eventually expand and "take indoor spaces" such as city halls and state capitols, in order to "unite" with "mass movements against state and local budget cuts and in defense of public sector unions." DSA members across the U.S. have been actively participating in the Occupy movement.

Such a strategy would put police officers, many of them members of public-sector unions, in a difficult situation. In the end, of course, they can be counted on to enforce the law, which has been ignored by "progressive" politicians in such cities as New York, Washington, D.C., and Oakland, Calif.

The politicians, including Obama, have been hoping the demonstrations would help their political campaigns by emphasizing the issue of "social inequality" and the need for bigger government and higher levels of taxation. The police, however, have understood from the start that the lawlessness must be stopped. What they may not understand is that they are being targeted in the process and that more confrontations are yet to come.

Many Occupy sites display open hatred for the police. It is so open that posters of cop-killers Mumia Abu Jamal and Lovelle Mixon are ominously affixed to tents. Mixon, a suspected child rapist, gunned down four Oakland officers in different parts of the city; he is now an anointed hero of the Occupiers.

Meanwhile, Atlanta protesters renamed their entire encampment after cop-killer Troy Davis, who shot a policeman in 1989 as the officer came to the aid of a homeless man Davis was pistol-whipping. Impervious to irony, the Atlanta Occupiers have thus rechristened a park where homeless people loiter after a man who bashed a homeless man, rather than naming it after the police officer who gave his life to try to save that homeless man from Davis' violence.

The intensity of venom the Occupy protesters direct at street police, and not at elected officials or even police chiefs, is part of an intentional strategy to incite and amplify confrontations with police and then scapegoat police for the ensuing incidents. This is a well-worn activist strategy, one that relies on both complacent media eager to report "clashes" between protesters and police, and on elected officials eager to curry favor with the activists and constituent groups that support them.

While mayors and editorial boards posture, scolding the police one day and wondering why they didn't stop store-looting the next, the seasoned activists behind the visible Occupy encampments are creating no-go zones for the police on public property. This disturbing development, like others, has been accepted by authorities with barely a whimper, even when the result is impeding investigations of serious crimes such as rapes.

The Occupiers' repulsive strategy of creating ostentatious "safe zones" for women rather than using all their resources to unambiguously cooperate in capturing sex offenders places them in the company of the disgraced football coaches of Penn State.

Behind the visible faces of the Occupy movement -- students worried about repaying their loans, aging peaceniks, drug-addicted hangers-on -- there are professional agitators and activists whose goal is dismantling capitalism and the "police state" that protects it. They are serious about a revolution, just as the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen were serious decades ago.

Long before the first tent went up in New York's Zuccotti Park, communist Angela Davis' "cop-watch" organization known as Critical Resistance was teaching activists to writhe and scream for the cameras while being handcuffed. The anarchist collective Ruckus Society was publishing how-to manuals with detailed instructions for invading buildings, disrupting mass transit and cargo movements, and maximizing chaos in the streets.

Meanwhile, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU continued their tradition of defending such lawbreaking. These groups provide legal support to those arrested, so the protesters can be quickly back on the streets.

While it has become a cliche to say so, every one of these organizations enjoys funding from hedge fund operator George Soros, who also donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to subsidize Ruckus Society workshops teaching rope skills and building-invasion techniques. Soros money also flows through his Open Society Institute into Critical Resistance and the Center for Constitutional Rights' so-called Movement Support Coalition.

The police have always stood on the front lines against such groups, while the rest of us have the luxury of watching from a distance. But with the protesters showing no signs of going away for good, it is time for the law-abiding among us to go public with our support for local police as they protect life, liberty and property.

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